The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel: Sir Richard Greville and Cornish Particularism, 1644–6*

Abstract

Abstract This article re‐examines the wartime career of the Cornish royalist leader Sir Richard Grenville (1600–59). Drawing on a wide range of contemporary documents and pamphlets, it not only provides new evidence of the brutality which Sir Richard exhibited towards prisoners, but also reveals how he attempted to make use of Cornish particularist sentiment in order to recruit his forces and bolster his own position within the royalist hierarchy. The article emphasizes the extent to which the Civil War in the South‐West possessed an ethnic dimension, and concludes that Cornwall merits greater consideration within the new ‘British’ historiography.

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